UNC Sea Grant 



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NORTH CAROL^gTATE LIBRA 



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R>MGr 



September, 1979 



Doc. 

 MAR S 1980 



coast Swatch 



Reaching a New England fishery, Tillett inquires about squid, comes up empty, and ponders his next move 



'Captain Hughes' Tillett: advice seasoned with salt 



By 10 o'clock on Thursday morn- 

 ing, after two hours of telephoning up 

 and down the East Coast on a wild- 

 goose chase for squid, Hughes Tillett 

 has the telephone in a stranglehold. 



He spins another number, honeys his 

 voice to a secretary somewhere in New 

 England, states his business, gets no- 

 where, and hangs up with another 

 number to jot down. 



"Everybody gives me somebody else 

 to call," he grumbles. 



Now hold on. Any fisherman who 

 has known Tillett since he worked a 

 boat out of Wanchese, fishing the 

 waters from Ocracoke to Currituck, 

 can tell you there's something cock- 

 eyed about this scene. 



Since when did Hughes Tillett need 

 a telephone to hunt squid? They've 

 always been the ten-armed, saucer- 

 eyed "trash" that you hauled up when 

 you went floundering — hardly worth 

 the effort to box. 



"Fishing in North Carolina has 

 changed," he argues, poking his pen at 

 a notepad. "There were always good 

 years and bad years, but there wasn't 

 all this new gear to keep up with, and 

 there wasn't as much competition as 

 there is now. Now that there's getting 

 to be a market for these squid, they 

 might turn out to be something these 

 guys can work, so that everybody 

 doesn't have to work the same 

 species." 



Tillett is one of Sea Grant's marine 

 advisory agents. Advising coastal resi- 

 dents, especially fishermen, requires a 

 lot of legwork and a downright pig- 

 headed determination to get the facts. 

 That's why he spends a lot of time on 

 the telephone. 



He's hunting squid because Malcolm 

 Daniels called him last night, woke him 

 up and asked him for help. Daniels, a 

 fisherman in Wanchese, has rigged a 

 brand-new trawler just for squid. It 

 even has an on-board freezer, the first 

 Tillett has seen in the Outer Banks 

 area. 



The Japanese, it seems, are offering 

 Continued on next page 



